No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk by Tamar Myers

they was forming their own company. You know, one of them—them—”
    “Cooperatives?”
    “Yeah, that’s it. You gotta admire the Amish. They’re real hard workers. It’s in their blood.”
    “You don’t say.” So it wasn’t just wishful thinking, after all. Susannah was adopted!
    “Yeah, well.” She stood up without checking for clearance. It was a good thing her place lacked ceiling fans. “You stop back in the next few days, okay?”
    I got up as well. I had room for another order of bacon, maybe even a short stack of it, but Pauline’s prices were far from puny. Then I remembered something.
    “Pauline, dear—do you mind if I call you that?”
    She snapped her consent.
    “You said before that you thought the Amish were in the juicer. You think they still are?”
    “That’s Aymish, hon. Yeah, I know they’ve got this cooperative and all, but something still ain’t right. They look kinda scared. Like they’re afraid of their own shadows, if you ask me.”
    I had asked her, and she had told me more than I’d expected.
    The county sheriff’s office was just across the street, so I left my car at Pauline’s and hoofed it. I am a firm believer in exercise, and after jumping to conclusions, walking is my favorite kind. Walking is, after all, a natural form of exercise and was even practiced back in Biblical days. The Apostles, I know, did a lot of it. There is not one verse, however, that mentions them hopping up and down on steps that go nowhere or rowing boats without hulls. That’s because they weren’t lazy. Susannah, on the other hand, takes an afternoon aerobics class in Bedford that she drives to. Half the time Susannah skips her class because she can’t find a parking place close enough to suit her. Go figure.
    At any rate, you would think that walking to the sheriff’s office would give me plenty of opportunity to read the sign by the front door, but I must have been thinking about home, and Aaron, because I missed it. It was only after I had closed the front door behind me, and set off some sort of signal which alerted the secretary, that I realized the Farmersburg sheriff’s office was not where I wanted to be.
    “Can I help you?” the secretary asked. She was in fact very pleasant.
    “Ah, no thanks. I thought this was the telephone company.” Okay, so it was a lie, but a lie told under extreme pressure. If there ever was a mitigating circumstance, it was the sign behind her that read Marvin Stoltzfus, Sheriff.
    “The telephone company is two stoplights west, then left on Main. Right beside the Baptist church.”
    “Thank you.”
    I wheeled and was about to make the fastest exit ever out of a building not on fire, but the front door opened and in stepped the sheriff. There was no mistaking that he was a Stoltzfus.
    To be truthful, he didn’t look anything like our chief of police back in Hernia, Melvin Stoltzfus, who, tradition said, was kicked in the head by a bull when he tried to milk it. However, every molecule in my body knew they were related. Maybe it was the pheromone things again. After all, if Jack’s giant can smell the blood of an Englishman, I see no reason why a Yoder can’t smell a Stoltzfus. He probably smelled me too.
    “Don’t I know you?” asked Sheriff Stoltzfus.
    “No.” I tried to move around him, but he jockeyed to cut me off.
    “Marilyn Memmer, is it?”
    “No.” I bobbed in the opposite direction but wasn’t quick enough.
    “Rebecca Kreider?”
    “No!” My patience was wearing thin, and I would have to go over him if I couldn’t get around him on the next try.
    “Agnes Hostetler?”
    “Getting warmer,” I said, taking a step forward.
    “Aha! You’re a Yoder, aren’t you?”
    I stepped back. I’d been caught. My colors were revealed. “But you don’t know which Yoder now, do you?” I taunted him.
    He laughed, something Melvin would never have done, and took two steps forward so that we were nose to chin. His nose, my chin. “Does it